The darkening shadow of the mushroom cloud

The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog's back 1234567890", read the message from the USA to the USSR marking a big leap for world peace. It was sent on August 30, 1963, to test all the keys of the hotline established between the two nations post Cuban Missile crisis, to head off a nuclear war.

- SATISH KUMAR SHARMA

The crisis had left the two superpowers looking for a faster and direct link between the heads of the government because the diplomatic mode of communication tended to be tortuously slow, formal, and ambiguity ridden.

The hotline was not a red telephone on Jack Kennedy's desk so one could just lift the receiver and ask Khrushchev about the Moscow weather. It was a wired telegraph link with radio telegraph backup and teleprinters on both sides with facility for prompt translation.

Since then, more hotlines have connected the nuclear nations (Indo-Pak nuclear hotline became operational in 2004), but the thread by which the sword of a nuclear war dangles over humanity's head has become more tenuous because now more nations possess nuclear weapons and the cold war stability of the balance of power has given way to the unpredictability of a multipolar world.